WHAT ARE THE MYSTERIOUS MARKINGS ON THE SHIGIR IDOL?

The Shigir Idol is covered in carvings, including what looks like code.

The sculpture, known as the Shigir Idol, is now housed at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum

Professor Mikhail Zhilin, leading researcher of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Archeology said: 'The ornament is covered with nothing but encrypted information. People were passing on knowledge with the help of the Idol.'

While the messages remain 'an utter mystery to modern man', the Russian academic said its creators 'lived in total harmony with the world, had advanced intellectual development, and a complicated spiritual world'.

Svetlana Savchenko, chief keeper of Shigir Idol at Yekaterinburg History Museum, concluded that 'a straight line could denote land, or horizon - the boundary between earth and sky, water and sky, or the borderline between the worlds.

'In addition, the zigzag signalled danger, like a pike. Cross, rhombus, square, circle depicted the fire or the sun, and so on.'

But the marks could have multiple meanings for the ancient makers who gave the idol seven faces, only one of which is in 3D.

'If these are images of spirits that inhabited the human world in ancient times, the vertical position of figures (one above the other) probably relate to hierarchy,' said Petr Zolin.

'Images on the front and back planes of the Idol, possibly indicate that they belong to different worlds.

'If there are depicted myths about the origin of humans and the world, the vertical arrangement of the images may reflect the sequence of events. Ornaments can be special signs which mark something as significant.'

Mr Savchenko argues that the idol tells the story of the 'creation of the world' as understood by Mesolithic man.